Going into this midterm campaign, Republicans were haunted by memories of Christine O’Donnell, Todd Akin, Sharron Angle and Richard Mourdock. The Republican candidates who ran for the Senate from Delaware, Missouri, Nevada and Indiana in 2010 and 2012 proved famously not up to the job, and their gaffe-ridden campaigns motivated the GOP to focus on recruiting better candidates.
There is no doubt the performance of GOP Senate candidates has vastly improved from earlier years. And sure enough, Republicans are doing better in Senate races this year.
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| ‘Ernst and Gardner are the two best candidates Republicans put forward this year. They are running in tough states where the Left has been ascendant recently, but they refused to be drawn into the traps and the usual narratives that Republicans often get drawn into.’ |
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A lot of factors helped the GOP. President Obama’s unpopularity has been huge. But even bigger has been the superior quality of Republican candidates; 2014 is proving once again that candidate quality matters more than anything.
Go down the list. Recently Kristin Lynch, press secretary for embattled Colorado Democratic Sen. Mark Udall, called Udall’s opponent, Republican Rep. Cory Gardner, “quite possibly the best Senate candidate in the country.” Lynch quickly backtracked, but her slip was the truth: Gardner has run a terrific campaign. With a sunny, positive approach, Gardner has consistently outmaneuvered Democrats who tried to pin a tired “war on women” narrative on him. A less-skilled Republican candidate might have gotten snared.
In Iowa, Joni Ernst has no national experience but a sure-handed way with her state’s voters and a clear sense of their mood. Like Gardner, Ernst confounded Democrats who tried to portray her as a turn-back-the-clock Republican. Instead, she deftly exploited the mistakes her opponent, Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley, seemed unable to avoid making.
“Ernst and Gardner are the two best candidates Republicans put forward this year,” says a conservative operative who has been involved in all the Senate races. “They are running in tough states where the Left has been ascendant recently, but they refused to be drawn into the traps and the usual narratives that Republicans often get drawn into.”
In Arkansas, Rep. Tom Cotton is not the natural campaigner that Ernst and Gardner are. But he has a background voters genuinely admire, going from a tiny Arkansas town to the Ivy League to the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. And Cotton has gotten better on the stump by the day; like his fellow candidates in Colorado and Iowa, he just doesn’t fit the ugly image Democrats tried to impose on him.
Republican strategists place Ernst, Gardner, and Cotton at the top of the 2014 roster. But other GOP candidates — some winning, some losing — have run solid campaigns and avoided the horrendous mistakes that hurt the party in years past.
In Louisiana, Rep. Bill Cassidy is another candidate who isn’t a natural. But Cassidy, a physician who has made Obamacare a major part of his campaign against incumbent Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, knows his stuff. He has been impressive in debate, and from the very beginning has presented voters with a viable alternative to Landrieu, a candidate whose entire appeal is based on Senate seniority and clout. Cassidy and Landrieu are likely headed to a December runoff, with the Republican favored.
Other GOP candidates haven’t been quite as good, but they have been serious improvements over the past. In North Carolina, Thom Tillis has run a lackluster campaign, and yet he remains close in the race to unseat incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan. In Georgia, David Perdue has also been lackluster but appears headed either toward outright victory or a runoff with Democrat Michelle Nunn.
In New Hampshire, Scott Brown has been a good, and tested, candidate, but he faced an uphill fight the whole way, beginning with the fact that he moved to the state to run for Senate. Even with that, Brown still has a chance to defeat Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, a sitting senator and former governor.
Overall, it’s probably fair to say Republicans will lose just one Senate race because of a candidate who simply wasn’t up to the task. The Senate seat in Michigan was open, and Democratic candidate Rep. Gary Peters was vulnerable, but Republican Terri Lynn Land couldn’t make it a contest.
Some observers attribute the overall improvement in GOP candidate quality to a takeover of the party by old Establishment types who were determined to put Tea Partiers in their place. And yes, there are old Establishment types who want to do just that. But most of the good Republican contenders had to make it through a party primary to get where they are today. The voters usually chose the best candidate.
“I think Republican primary voters deserve the lion’s share of the credit,” says the conservative strategist. “They wanted to win.”
